Warning Slides Before Welsh Disaster

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31231, 1 December 1966, Page 11

Warning Slides Before Welsh Disaster

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter —Copyright) MERTHYR TYDFIL, Nov. 29. A black avalanche of colliery refuse which rained death and destruction on the Welsh village of Aberfan was preceded by two warning slides—one of them at the same inquiry tribunal was told here today. Black-dressed relatives of some of the 116 children and 28 adults who died in the avalanche listened quietly as the Attorney-General, Sir Elwyn Jones, painted a vivid picture of the “total catastrophe” which overwhelmed nearby Aberfan on October 21. Sir Elwyn Jones questioned the choice of a site for the No. 7 colliery tip which engulfed Aberfan School, and claimed the tipping of coal waste on the lower slopes of the Merthyr mountain might at any time have constituted a potential threat to the village. In 1944, part of one tip collapsed 1600 feet down the mountainside to within 500 feet of Aberfan, and the tip which caused last month’s disaster split at the same place and slipped in 1963, he said. Sir Elwyn Jones said that officials, who decided to set up the tip which engulfed Aber-

fan, did so without considering survey maps, underground springs, or streams which ran in wet weather at the foot of an existing tip. He also suggested the tribunal examine whether any action was taken on a Coal Board engineer’s report last year calling for detailed examination of every tip in the area and listing six precautions to stop sliding. It seemed a decision to stop using the No. 7 tip had been taken just before the killer avalanche broke loose, after two men working on the tip that morning noticed it was sinking. The tribunal might find it incomprehensible that there had been no communication system linking the top of the tip to the colliery itself, he added.

The inquiry is being held in the assembly room of Merthyr College—its windows overlooking one of the oldest colliery tips in Britain. Two giant aerial photographs of Aberfan, one before the disaster, the other showing the smashed school, provide a starkly dramatic background to the mass of technical details expected to be argued in the six weeks the hearing is likely to last.